What is Title IX?
Excerpt from A Little-Noticed Inflection Point in the Summer 2022 issue of Pacific Magazine.
Title IX is a refreshingly simple declaration.
"No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance."
The Education Amendments of 1972, of which Title IX is a part, was passed by Congress and signed into law by President Richard Nixon. It was the federal government’s initiative to extend the educational opportunities that men had long enjoyed to women, and later, explicitly to all people, regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity.
It applies to schools, libraries, museums and other institutions that receive money from the federal Department of Education. The immediate effect on many campuses in the early 1970s was to add athletic programs for women, whose opportunities typically were dwarfed by those afforded to men. But the benefits of Title IX extend far beyond the playing field.
As the Education Department notes: “Some key issue areas in which recipients have Title IX obligations are: recruitment, admissions, and counseling; financial assistance; athletics; sex-based harassment, which encompasses sexual assault and other forms of sexual violence; treatment of pregnant and parenting students; treatment of LGBTQI+ students; discipline; single-sex education; and employment.”
Source: U.S. Department of Education
This story appears in the Summer 2022 issue of Pacific magazine. For more stories, visit pacificu.edu/magazine.
